A Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams

CHAPTER 1The Three Stages of Virtual Team Development

When quicker, smarter, and more flexible work groups are in demand, virtual teams are the answer. These highly adaptive work communities are able to extract appropriate resources from the organization and are well suited to twenty-first-century business operations driven by globalization and technology innovation.

In this first chapter, I’d like to introduce an approach to virtual team development that I use with clients. It sets the tone for the rest of the book since all the other chapters follow this approach. As virtual team arrangements become increasingly popular, leaders continue to grapple with a profound issue—how to get team members to bond and form the energy so vital to pushing ...